Ranking – Page 3 – Syndication Server

Where Wisconsin basketball ranks in key metrics entering the final stretch of Big Ten play

What will Wisconsin’s record be in its final four Big Ten games?

Wisconsin basketball returns to the court Tuesday night in Bloomington, Indiana for a crucial road test against the Indiana Hoosiers.

The Badgers will have been idle for a full week in between its games against Maryland and Indiana. The restful period precedes a gauntlet final stretch of their Big Ten schedule: at Indiana, vs No. 12 Indiana, vs Rutgers and at No. 3 Purdue.

Things appear to have stabilized since the program’s early February nosedive. The Badgers have now won two of three, with the only loss coming at the buzzer in overtime at Iowa.

Greg Gard’s team still has work to do as it prepares for postseason play. But despite its recent struggles, the team is still viewed favorably by most major metrics.

Here is a round-up of where Wisconsin ranks in each ranking system entering the final stretch of its season:

Week 16 AP Poll sees Alabama Crimson Tide rise all the way to No. 13 in the country

Alabama basketball jumps Auburn in Week 16 AP Poll

The Alabama Crimson Tide are coming off of back-to-back 100-point victories over LSU and Texas A&M and are playing as well as anyone in the country right now. The Tide stand alone atop the SEC leaderboard, and with just six games left in the regular season a conference title is within reach.

However, it will be no walk in the park as four of the Tide’s remaining six games come against ranked teams with trips to Florida and Kentucky on the horizon. Although, the biggest test will be when No. 5 Tennessee comes to town on March 3rd as they are the only team within one game of Alabama.

With Alabama playing their best ball of the season, the Week 16 AP Poll has the Crimson Tide ranked at No. 13 in the country. One spot ahead of Auburn who ranks No. 14 this week. Alabama will be back in action Wednesday evening against the Florida Gators.

Contact/Follow us @RollTideWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Alabama news, notes and opinion. You can also follow Sam Murphy on Twitter @SamMurphy02.

Wisconsin drops out of latest USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll

Wisconsin basketball’s February slide continued on Saturday. An 88-86 overtime loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes dropped Wisconsin to 17-9 on the season and 9-6 in Big Ten play, now tied with Northwestern and Michigan State for third place in the conference standings.

The team’s 1-5 record since the start of February has it falling down the conference standings and KenPom ratings, and also beginning to drop out of the national polls.

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One such drop became official this morning, as the latest USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll had the Badgers fall outside the top 25.

Wisconsin joined Oklahoma, Virginia and Indiana State as teams to fall out of the rankings.

Top-ranked UConn and Houston, meanwhile, continue to keep pace and lead the nation. Other notable shakeups include South Carolina dropping nine spots, San Diego State rising 12 slots and Tennessee rising five to become the fifth-ranked team in the poll.

Wisconsin is back on the court Tuesday night against the Maryland Terrapins. The Badgers need to restart a winning streak before the season crumbles away.

Contact/Follow @TheBadgersWire on X (formerly Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers news, notes, and opinion. Follow Ben Kenney on X.

Which Big Ten football team has the toughest conference schedule in 2024?

Wisconsin has one of the conference’s toughest schedules in 2024

The Big Ten football season is going to look different in 2024.

New additions USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington bring more formidable opponents to the table. But more importantly, gone is the East-West Division model, replaced by a format of conference standings similar to that in basketball.

There are some blockbuster out-of-conference games to monitor before the conference slate begins this fall. Wisconsin hosts Alabama, USC faces LSU and Michigan meets Texas. Then begins the conference schedule, which is filled with big-time matchups every weekend.

So far this offseason we’ve already ranked all 18 programs in the Big Ten, ranked the 18 head coaches, predicted each Big Ten team’s 2024 record and checked in on the Las Vegas win totals for each team in the conference.

Now it’s time to take a look at each team’s 2024 conference schedule:

So, to rank each program’s 2024 Big Ten schedule as we preview the 2024 season we’ve taken each team’s ESPN SP+ rating and found numerical values for every game, and therefore every schedule.

The equation is simple. Every opponent’s SP+ rating is added together to find a Total Opponent Score. That large number is then divided by the nine conference games to find the Average Opponent Score — a number that can then be compared to the SP+ leaderboard to find the average quality of team each schedule contains.

Here is how each program’s 2024 Big Ten Conference schedule ranks, from easiest to most challenging:

Wisconsin landed one of the best high school running backs this recruiting cycle

Wisconsin football rebuilt its running back room this offseason.

Most notably, the program landed one of the best transfer portal running backs, Tawee Walker.

However, the program’s incoming class of 2024 includes three RBs: four-star Dilin Jones, three-star Darrion Dupree and three-star Gideon Ituka.

Jones is the headliner of the group, and recently finished the 2024 recruiting cycle as one of the top running backs in the class.

Overall, the Olney, Maryland, native is the No. 139 player in the class, the No. 10 player at his position and No. 4 recruit from the state of Maryland.

Wisconsin returns Chez Mellusi to lead the room this season. But the program can now boast high-level depth that should pay dividends in the coming years. That is especially the case with Jones, who appears to be a star in the making:

DILIN JONES! OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE YEAR 💪 #WeAreGC pic.twitter.com/v4vJebrsLy

— GC Football (@gcfootball) November 26, 2023

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Contact/Follow @TheBadgersWire on X (formerly Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers news, notes and opinion. Follow Ben Kenney on X.

ChatGPT ranks the most intimidating Big Ten football stadiums to play in

From SHI Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey, to Husky Stadium in Seattle Washington, the Big Ten stretches from coast to coast.

With the conference’s latitude comes different stadium environments, different histories and unique traditions in every case.

Late last summer, I ranked the toughest road environments in the Big Ten after the conference’s new additions. Now that the 2023 season has concluded and the conference officially has 18 members, I decided to check the list with some outside counsel.

That is where ChatGPT comes in. I asked the OpenAI language model to rank the 18 Big Ten football home atmospheres by the most intimidating to play in — obviously including new additions USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington.

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Here is what the ChatGPT responded:

You might be surprised where Wisconsin football is on ESPN’s early 2024 SP+ rankings

Has Wisconsin’s offseason been a success?

Today marks an important day on the college football calendar, or at least it should. It is the annual release of Bill Connelly’s pre-spring SP+ rankings — arguably the best forward-looking rating system in college football.

His ratings merge returning production from the previous year, recent recruiting and transfer portal performance, and each program’s recent history to create the most accurate forecast for the upcoming year. More than the AP Poll just basing much of the voting off last year’s results, Connelly’s numbers actually consider the factors that decide success.

Wisconsin enters the spring period after an interesting offseason. In comes the nation’s No. 18-ranked transfer class led by former Miami quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, but out went several of Luke Fickell’s top assistant coaches.

The Badgers need a rebound in 2024 after a 7-6 2023 campaign. A glass-half-full approach would look at turnover and call it a good thing given last year’s results, while the glass-half-empty view would point out that turnover is often a bad thing in college football.

Either way, Wisconsin isn’t entering 2024 ranked inside the nation’s top 10, instead more of a borderline top-25 team.

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That’s where Connelly’s pre-spring SP+ ranking has the Badgers, obviously with room to rise or fall depending on performance on the field.

Remember, Connelly always adds this disclaimer when it comes to the rankings:

A reminder on SP+: It’s a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.

Here is his full pre-spring SP+ top 25:

Wisconsin football omitted from ESPN’s way-too-early top 25

Is Wisconsin a top-25 team entering 2024?

Wisconsin football is not a top-25 team entering the 2024 season, according to ESPN’s recent ranking.

The Badgers are fresh off back-to-back 7-6 seasons and are without a 10-win season since 2019. Head coach Luke Fickell was hired to turn that trend around, though it may be a slower build than some thought.

Not only does Wisconsin no longer get the benefit of playing in the Big Ten West, but the Badgers face a gauntlet schedule in 2024 and have a projected win total of only 6.5.

Wisconsin has not entered a football season unranked since 2016, when the program went from unranked to finishing No. 5 in the nation. The last time before that was 2009. In short: the Badgers, traditionally, are always ranked entering the season.

NEW: ESPN updated its 2024 Way-Too-Early College Football Top 25👀

Thoughts? ⬇️https://t.co/UHcYwzvovh pic.twitter.com/9GnPiGlejC

— On3 (@On3sports) February 13, 2024

Nearly 200 days still separate us from Wisconsin’s first game of the season. But where things stand at the moment, the industry does not view the Badgers as a top-25 team.

Alabama basketball ranked No. 15 in Coaches Poll

Crimson Tide continue to rise by the week in the Coaches Poll

The Alabama Crimson Tide are coming off of a 109-92 hammering of the LSU Tigers in Baton Rouge and are playing as well as anyone in the Southeastern Conference right now. At 9-2 in SEC play, the Crimson Tide and South Carolina Gamecock stand atop the leaderboard with just seven conference games remaining.

However, the home stretch will not be easy for the Tide with Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas left as well as two games against the Florida Gators. [autotag]Mark Sears[/autotag] has been the leader of the Crimson Tide this season averaging 20.5 ppg, 4.3 rpg and 4.0 apg, as well as tacking on 1.7 steals per game on the defensive end as well. He’s shot a remarkable 51.3% from the field and 44.4% from three and is likely on his way to First-Team All-SEC honors.

The Crimson Tide as a whole are hitting their stride at the perfect time with March right around the corner. This week, Alabama rose one spot in the Week 15 Coaches Poll to No. 15 in the country. Alabama basketball will be back in action from Coleman Colosseum on Saturday.

Alabama basketball rises one spot in Week 15 AP Poll

Alabama hoops jump to No. 15 in this weeks AP Poll

Despite losing by 18 points earlier in the week on the road against the Auburn Tigers, [autotag]Nate Oats[/autotag] and the Alabama squad responded with a resounding 109-92 victory in Baton Rouge Saturday afternoon over the LSU Tigers. Even though the Tide were just 1-1 on the week, they rose one spot in the Week 15 AP Poll to No. 15 in the nation.

Alabama currently stands at 17-7 on the season, however, the losses can be a bit misleading as they came against some of the best teams in the country like Arizona, Creighton and Purdue. The Tide’s out-of-conference schedule is only going to help them the deeper they go in the season and into the tournament. Plus, the losses aren’t even really being held against Alabama as ESPN’s March Madness expert Joe Lunardi currently projects the Tide to to be a three-seed.

At 9-2 in the SEC, Alabama and South Carolina share the lead for the conference with Auburn one game back. The Crimson Tide don’t play again until next Saturday when they host the Texas A&M Aggies before traveling to Lexington to take on the Kentucky Wildcats.